He was a "hit" in a burlesque of Lalla Rookh as the villain "Khorsambad", not found in the poem, and "portrayed with the broadest of pencils and the strongest of colours".
[2] and James Planché's The Yellow Dwarf, though he and Miss Mortimer were badly let down by the rest of the cast[3] and the show closed after a few nights.
[4] The ill-feeling between the two managements was still evident two months later when G. V. Brooke scotched plans to combine funds raised by the two theatres to benefit the daughter of Ellen Mortyn, who died 22 June 1859.
Presentations at The Olympic in its first three months included Falconer's Extremes, Fitzball's The World and Stage, Boucicault's Janet Pride, Byron's Mazeppa and Brough's burlesque Medea.
[7] A partial solution was to take the productions to country areas: the gold-mining towns had an appetite for theatre and didn't mind spending money on a good show.
It was while playing in Sunderland that he lost his life in a train crash, an event his friends assert he had envisaged, and the way he wanted to go — sudden and unforeseen.